Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I was worried by Bernie’s bragging. The eyes of my family — those wide-apart, slightly startled and clever Rabinowitz eyes — all tracked me. I was especially bothered by the amazed, almost appalled look on the faces of Aaron and Helen, Uncle Bernie’s son and daughter. They had come home from college for this occasion. Unbeknownst to me they were having difficult times academically — which meant they were having an altogether miserable time since it was the current all-important symbol in their lives. Every compliment Bernie spoke about me was a blow to them. I sensed that much at least. I looked away from their hurt and envy to concentrate on Julie. Her beauty and genuine friendliness was attractive anyway, but it was her precocious sexual maturity that had a special significance for me. And her frown of disapproval about Bernie’s talk was intriguing.

After telling the room what my teachers reported about me, Bernie hit them with my IQ. (It was said and experienced as a coup de grace.) He went on to describe the chess match at his club. He told how I had fallen behind, how the Retail King goaded me and how he had encouraged me to “Never give up!”

At this point, Julie commented, quietly but distinctly enough to be heard, “That’s disgusting.”

“Julie, don’t interrupt,” Uncle Harry said automatically, without bothering to turn his head in her direction, as if this were an injunction he had to make often.

Julie’s mother, Aunt Ceil, looked puzzled. She was much less intelligent than her husband and daughter; or at least claimed ignorance so they frequently needed to explain things to her. Julie and Harry behaved as if the need to correct Ceil was an annoyance, but it supported Uncle Harry’s fragile self-esteem (he suffered greatly from living in the chill of his brother’s gigantic shadow) and also nurtured Julie’s genuine self-confidence. “What do you mean, dear?” Ceil asked, loudly, so that Uncle Bernie paused. “Rafael wasn’t being disgusting.”

“Not him,” Julie shut her eyes, drew her legs together, coming to attention and inhaling. This pushed her breasts out against her angora sweater. I watched them.

[Strangely, perhaps hilariously, I must attempt to explain my interest in her breasts. I had been prematurely sexualized by my mother. The ways in which that made me different from other nine-year-olds requires careful consideration. After all, it is difficult enough to make correct distinctions between normal childhood sexuality and adult sexuality. Consider the mess geniuses such as Freud and other psychological theorists made of infantile sexuality, a concept they were brilliant enough to discover and human enough to equate with adult passion, especially as regards volition. That error led Freud to overrate it, Jung to dismiss it … This gets into a technical argument of little real use. But if a clear explanation eluded two generations of brilliant scientists, what hope do I have of elucidating the difference between normal childhood sexuality and that of an incest victim? Only this, that I have the benefit of their brilliance and error and, of course, the advantage that I experienced it myself. At nine I knew there was adult arousal, adult orgasm and understood erections in a pragmatic postpubescent way. I had been erect on at least three occasions because of the touch of another person, an important difference from the normal childhood experience of accidental or self-stimulated genital excitement. By logical extension that meant I had a tactile understanding of sex (the most profound understanding one can have) as well as the non-reproductive interest adults have in the human body. A normal nine-year-old boy (I mean, of course, a non-sexualized nine-year-old) might have factual awareness, might understand that Julie’s breasts were a symbol of her adulthood and wish to see them, but he would not be genitally aroused by them in the adult way. To be even more precise about the distinction, a normal boy would not think that he ought to be aroused, would not aspire to be aroused. I did. I looked and thought, or rather willed myself to feel that I should like those breasts. At night in bed, when I was most lonely, missing the fantasy of my courageous and beautiful parents, I had begun to masturbate. Again, not in the adult sense, not because I was, to put it crudely, horny. I masturbated because I knew I could, as a matter of mechanical fact, not as part of normal child-like self-stimulation, which is for the pleasant sensation itself, unaccompanied by fantasy or an attempt to reach orgasm. No, my self-touching was that of an odd little man, wishing to heighten the experience using memories of my taboo experiences with my mother and hoping to achieve a climax as she had. Why this ambition? A blossom of reasons: to imitate the behavior of an adult male: to be desirable to my mother: to win back the love and comfort I had lost. My behavior wasn’t really mature sexuality, with the desire to touch others and be touched by them, and it wasn’t child-like self-pleasuring. I had been spoiled, unable to be a man or a boy and yet longing to be both. Thus, a twelve-year-old girl with the secondary characteristics of a woman seemed a perfect love object. Alas, I have succumbed to jargon.]

I looked at Julie’s precocious breasts, her full lips, her long black hair (pulled back that day), her intelligent eyes, and felt I loved her, that I wanted to marry her. What she said that afternoon about Uncle Bernie’s bragging made me love her more.

“I mean it’s unfair of Uncle Bernie to tell everyone what Rafael’s IQ is.” She pronounced it RAY-FEEL, but my love for her continued to grow unchecked. “And I think it’s disgusting to make him prove he’s smart by beating another boy at chess.”

“Julie,” Uncle Harry said in the same critical tone he had used earlier, only it was more serious this time. This time he turned away from his brother and faced her, to emphasize his disapproval. “That’s a very rude thing to say to your uncle. I want you to apologize.”

Julie blushed. “I won’t apologize,” she said and clenched her fists, more to steel herself than to threaten. “He should apologize to Rafael.”

“Julie!” Uncle Harry shifted forward to the edge of his seat — he was on one of the couches opposite Bernie’s position in a wing chair — and wagged a finger at her. He was threatening.

“Take it easy, Harry,” his sister Sadie said in a mild, humorous tone. “She’s a woman now so you won’t have any of your sisters on your side.”

This comment broke the tension, causing general hilarity among the adults and teenage cousins. I didn’t laugh, but I understood at least part of Sadie’s remark. The other prepubescent children grinned reflexively at the grown-up amusement; they were puzzled, however, and searched their parents’ faces for more information.

Julie’s blush, needless to say, deepened. Her fists opened, however, and she didn’t drop her eyes. “I think I’m right,” she said with an effort, yet still loudly and clearly enough to be heard through the laughter.

Harry had his way out. It did involve humiliating his daughter, however. “Well, if she’s got The Curse I can forget about an apology.” This provoked bigger laughs from the adult males. There were looks of embarrassment on most of the aunts, including Julie’s mother. Bernie’s wife, Aunt Charlotte, appeared disgusted and Aunt Sadie frowned. The teenagers were deeply embarrassed. The kids were baffled. (I knew that meant Julie was menstruating. My mother made a sarcastic remark about The Curse as an introduction to her scientific explanation of the soggy red mass I found unflushed one morning. So I was right to love Julie: she was a little woman to my little man.)

Julie sagged. This time, she certainly looked as if she might cry.